Foreign Affairs

A very important and serious essay in which Philip Zelikow reflects on the current global situation and how America should promote its values. "Strategically, we could ask: Where can we do the most to tilt the balance toward an open and civilized world? What states or regions or issues are pivotal? Where can U.S. actions have catalytic impact?"

Mark Bowden's essay for the Atlantic on how to deal with North Korea is helpful in understanding the current state of the issue, the dangers that loom, and the options we have moving forward. He confesses that there are no good options, but that the least bad one is to learn to live with a North Korea with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (which has been the basic conclusion of every administration that's tried to grapple with the problem). He reminds us that we lived under a far more existential threat during the Cold War and learned to cope with that. But any attempt to remove the Kim regime or knock out their nuclear capability would assuredly lead to one of the greatest catastrophes in human history with possibly tens of millions of Koreans and Japanese being slaughtered.

An article in Foreign Policy points out that if we withdraw from the Paris accords, then we cede leadership in the new energy economy to China, with devastating economic effects for our nation. An excerpt:

The proven economic benefits of domestic action to advance clean energy, such as tax incentives for wind and solar energy, have supercharged our fast-growing clean-energy industry, added hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs, and promoted significant economic growth. Clean energy helped pave the way for the Obama administration to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 1994 levels, while managing to create 11.3 million jobs with 75 straight months of employment growth.

In short, the current administration doesn’t seem to get it. It argues that the Environmental Protection Agency needs to return to its “core mission,” as if carbon pollution doesn’t threaten public health and safety — never mind its impact on clean air and water.

And this point about the economic advantages of environmental regulation:

Unfortunately, the Trump administration is bowing to the old special-interest line that the United States must choose economic competitiveness over environmental protection even though history says otherwise.

During the EPA’s 46 years, the United States experienced record growth while curtailing pollution. For every dollar spent on lifesaving regulations, we’ve seen up to $9 in health benefits — a boon for economic welfare. Conventional air pollutants have been reduced by 70 percent, while our economy grew by about 250 percent. By 2008, the environmental technologies and services industry supported 1.7 million jobs and generated $300 billion in revenue. That year, the industry exported goods and services worth $44 billion, topping U.S. sectors like plastics and rubber products. During the Obama administration, we set a course with the auto industry to double fuel efficiency and prevent millions of tons of carbon pollution. Today, the industry is thriving.

A column in Haaretz takes Trump's gaslighting trip to Israel to task. An excerpt:

It speaks, I think, to the ultimately superficial quality of this man and his government.At its core there are no beliefs, only a series of empty gestures at a false decency without a hint of grace. While Trump was in Israel, more details emerged of one of the most savage programs of domestic austerity in the modern history of the United States, supposedly the richest country of the world.read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/1.791445

Here is a very thorough, measured, conservative analysis of the executive order against refugees. It is still critical. But it is the most thorough and should guide critics in what specifically to be critical of.